Saturday, August 23, 2014

“Earl Grey,” she said, handing the tea cup to the dead man in her living room.

He took it, sloshing tea over the side, but didn’t drink, just sat staring into the bottom of his cup as though it held all the answers to the universe.

Eva slipped into the chair across from her visitor, studying him. The dim light of her living room blunted his pallor, made him look a little more alive. Well, aside from the autopsy scar and the milky eyes….

A spirit inhabiting a body after physical death. Vivens mortua was the Latin name. The living dead.

There were stories of them in every culture. Legend often saw them as just another kind of parasite, tangling them up with tales of vampires and zombies. In other stories, they were mischievous creatures back to wreak havoc on the living. In still others, they were considered ill omens, predicting death or great loss for whomever saw them.

But they weren’t flesh eaters. They didn’t wear red silk lined capes or dine on blood. And if they predicted ill omens, Eva had never heard of any coming to fruition.

Of course, she’d never seen one of the living dead either. Though she had heard stories.

Admittedly, they were little more than myths handed down through the generations. People getting back into their bodies and going about their business like nothing had ever happened. They were some of the most difficult to move on, convinced as they were that nothing had changed. Sometimes, it wasn’t until their bodies began rotting around them that they accepted their own deaths.

But no story had ever depicted the living dead as so….

The man fumbled his tea cup again, fingers flailing as they tried to right it.

Uncoordinated, out of sync.

This man…he fit together wrong. Like someone had taken slightly mismatched puzzles pieces and mashed them together with a hammer and glue. His stunted, unsure walk. The way he held his body. Not to mention the silver-grey mist that roiled from his form every so often, curling and dissipating like smoke.

A thought came to her. “Is this….your body?”

He looked up. “No.” His voice was low, raspy, decaying vocal cords struggling to produce sound. “It’s the body of the man who stole mine.”

Friday, August 15, 2014

Mr. and Mrs. Avery squirmed slightly, looking for more comfortable positions on the narrow-seated late 19th century chairs. Hand-me-downs from her mother's side, Eva hadn’t been able to bring herself to get rid of the chairs. They'd spent most of their time wedged in a tiny closet in the back of her house.

Until she'd started doing The Work.

The chairs added to the mystique of what used to be her dining room, with its blue heirloom flocked wallpaper, Victorian crystal chandelier, and the white candles that decorated nearly every empty surface.

And they were uncomfortable. They didn’t encourage lingering.

On days like this, that was a godsend.

Mrs. Avery clasped her husband’s left hand. Mr. Avery reached into his pocket with his right, placed a folded wad of bills on the table. "We have to know.”

Grief deepened the lines of their faces, the curves of their mouths, stiffened their bodies in such a way that it seemed if they moved too fast or too suddenly they might shake themselves apart.

“Your son,” Eva said. “Kyle.” She fought to keep her eyes from straying to the spirit of said son. Grey and filmy like oil on water, he lingered by the front door, watching her.

“Yes! You know him. You’ve seen him? Is he okay?” The words spilled out of Mrs. Avery in a torrent. Tremulous, hopeful, desperate.

For a moment, Eva considered leveling with the couple…but, no. Mrs. Avery was mentally recapping Kodak-moments of her son’s life, from first steps to birthday parties. Happier times. Mr. Avery, twisting his hat in his factory-roughened hands, recalled the last words he’d ever said to Kyle, over two years ago.

“He’s moved on,” Eva said. And so began the song and dance she’d had to do more often than she liked. On the “good” days it was for estranged families whose relatives had nothing more to say to them in death than they had in life. On bad…well, there were more skeletons in this particular closet than she was prepared to sweep out.

The ghost of Kyle prowled the edges of the dining room, restless, pissed. She’d felt the lurch of his surprise when she’d lied to his parents.

I know you see me, he said.

She ignored him in favor of handing Mrs. Avery a tissue.

Twenty minutes later—a new record—she had them assuaged and heading out the door. As they went, she pressed half the money back into Mr. Avery’s hand, shrugging. “You didn’t get to speak to him. Seems unfair to charge you the regular rate.” And they needed it more. Mortgage was due.

He patted her hand in thank you, guided his wife down the old stone steps and to their car.

Eva flipped the sign on her door to read CLOSED, set the locks, watched the glass panes fog with cold.

Why, whispered the dead man in a voice that was like the clatter of spilled nails, didn't you tell them? That I want to talk to them? That I’m here.

The chill of his rage burned through her. She breathed slowly, pulled the roller shade down over the frosted glass before facing him, taking in the deep set eyes and gaunt features that were familiar to her.

A spirit had shown her his image a year ago, as she hovered (literally) over Eva’s sofa, trying to piece together the scattered memories of the end of her life, the blind date who had seemed so perfect for her and had left her a broken mess on the floor of her own kitchen. The spirits of two more women had come in the following months, dead long before their time.

“They don’t need to hear from you,” Eva said, voice steady. “They don’t need anything more than what I gave them.”

You don’t get to decide that.

“Actually, I do. Part of my work is keeping parasites away from the living. You’re a parasite, Kyle. You feed off misery. You’re done. You don’t get to cause them any more. They’ll be moving on. And so will you.” Something skittered at her door. “Shortly, by the sound of it. And don’t think you’ll be following your victims to a new playground.”

Kyle’s photo-negative eyes narrowed. So I’m Hell bound, is that it?

The hinges creaked.

“Above my pay grade,” Eva said.

The frame shivered; the door thumped as something hit it from the outside. They couldn’t come in, whomever or whatever it was that came to deal with the broken souls who found her. They couldn’t pass through the protective wards that generation upon generation had placed on the house.

But those wards were to protect the living.

Eva stepped back as Kyle’s form shook, shivered, broke apart as if someone had struck a fault line in his center; he turned to so much grey smoke and was sucked out beneath the door. Hoovered into wherever it was that spirits like him went.

The world fell quiet, save for the passing of traffic, the sound of thunder in the distance.

She had no more appointments booked for the day, so a cup of tea and a long bath were in order. Eva slipped through the door to the kitchen, only to be brought back a few minutes later by someone pounding on her door.

“Sign says closed.” She raised her voice just enough to be heard.

“Please. Please. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what to do!” A hand rattled the doorknob.

Eva twitched the shade back, blinked hard before reaching for the locks, peering through gap of the open door.

The man on her stoop was dark haired and wearing a pair of green hospital scrubs that set off the unnatural pallor of his skin. They were too big for him and slipped off one shoulder, revealing the edge of the unmistakable Y-shaped incision of an autopsy. His eyes were wild, the pupils blown wide behind the hazy cornea.

This was written in response to three prompts. Inspiration Monday's uncertainty is worse; Studio30Plus' entwined; and Monday's Light and Shade challenge picture prompt. (Any embarrassing errors are the product of my sleep deprived mind. Other rough edges are part of my effort to embrace first drafts as being imperfect. I edited as little as possible.)

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

She's been beach combing for hours, hunting for unique shells along the tide line, putting dead ones in her bag, throwing the live ones back into the sea. As she turns to start her trek back, she stumbles over the sharp spires of a lightning whelk.

Whatever lived in the shell has vacated it, leaving an unobstructed view of the smooth, pink walls. Holding a hand against her left ear, she lifts the shell to her right, waiting to hear the rush of wind and water.

Instead, a voice emanates from the shell.

What does it say?

This is your prompt, should you choose to accept it. Come back and share a link to your work in the comments.

8 a.m. and she’s hiding in the laundry room, leaning against the tumbling dryer, sketchbook in hand, trying not to upset the leaning tower of dirty clothes to her left.

She can hear them outside. Laughing, stalking, trying to find her. They want her to make ice cream sandwiches for breakfast. And play tag, and tell them stories, and…

“Honey? Have you seen—”

…Find their old baseball uniforms so they can relive the highlights of their youth.

Something scratches at the door; the faulty latch clicks and it swings open. The baby looks in, smiles, then toddles by, wearing nothing but a diaper with a tulip (from the birthday bouquet her mother sent) stuffed down the back of it.

Three weeks, she thinks. Three weeks and it’ll be over. Summer will end. Hopefully, before I end them.

“How many times have I told you to not use your baby brother as a flower pot?” Three sets of giggles flee down the hall.

“There you are!” James pokes his head in. “Have you—“

Ripping open the dryer, she pulls out his uniform. He looks at her once, steals a kiss, the uniform and promises to be home by 1:00.

She can’t promise, she thinks, opening the washer to find the clothes wrung out and stained purple, that home will still be here.

A quick fish through the damp laundry reveals a small, now empty, pot of Permanent Mauve oil paint.

“Three weeks,” she says.

It’s fast become a mantra.

For Inspiration Monday's "paint in the washing machine" prompt and Studio 30's "summer will end."

Friday, August 1, 2014

I'm having one of those moments. The ones that come well after you've taken the initiative to do something, when all your plans are in place and things are moving toward their inevitable conclusion. The ones that make you sit back and consider what you're getting yourself into and what you're going to be giving up. The ones that make you ask yourself "Was this really wise?"

I think the answer to that last question is yes.

But I won't put a definite on that until the end of the year. (I should have a better idea at that point.)

By now you're probably wondering what I'm rambling about....

I start grad school on the 20th of this month. It's something I'd been considering ever since (well, even before) I lost my job at the end of 2012. I considered it further when I got the part time transcriber job that I'm doing now and then decided to go ahead and apply. Applications were submitted, electronically, at the beginning of May. I was accepted within the week.

Luckily for me, it's an online program. While I have to have my ass in the seat two nights a week, for about three hours, I don't have to navigate the traffic of vehicles and pedestrians down at the university.

Between school and between my transcribing, I'm hoping I'll still have time to write. Which is funny, considering I haven't been doing a ton of writing with the time I have had.

I don't know what it is, but sometimes I think my schedule has to be completely filled before I can bring myself to sit down and really work at a project. Maybe with a full schedule, I feel that I'm earning my keep in this world? That I'm not just frittering away time.

It's the creative conundrum. You wish for more time and when you're granted it, you can't figure out how to use it. I think there's something about lacking free time...you tend to be more efficient. (Even if you're pissing and moaning about your lack of time the whole way.)

That said, despite the dent in my free time, despite the homework I'll likely have, I'm looking forward to school. I'm looking forward to learning more about the field I started in. I'm looking forward to enhancing my skills in editing audio, video, images and learning more about the field I spent a number of years in.

Have you had those moments of "did you really think this through?" How'd they turn out?